[mkeyhani]

I really like the idea behind Brave.

However, I think a fundamental issue arises if you are going to pay people to see ads: What if someone forks Brave, and creates a browser which blocks all Brave ads, while pretending to click on them?

Neither of the two solutions I can think of are pleasant ones: you either need to somehow verify that that ads are viewed by a human (i.e. CAPTCHAs), or use DRM-like mechanisms to hide a token in Brave’s brinary, so that only “honest” browsers can get paid.

[BrendanEich]

Any network with grants or revshares of tokens or other units of account that might exchange to money, and humans in the loop, will have fraud. Blockchain cannot stop it and has really nothing to offer yet on this front -- reputation on chain is a hope, some say a vain dream.

What Brave offers that's far better than today's joke of an antifraud system for ads is as follows: 1/ integrity-checked open source native code, which cannot be fooled by other JS on page; 2/ looking at all the sensors, even the ones without web APIs, to check humanity.

(1) requires SGX or ARM equivalent, widespread on mobile. JS by contrast cannot be sure of anything unless the antifraud script knows it runs first, and publishers cannot guarantee this in general or easily.

(2) is a material advantage over JS, which has only some but not all sensor APIs.

For more on the joke of antifraud adtech today, please see https://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/state-of-digital-ad-... and https://twitter.com/acfou's other work.